Introduction
Diego Jourdan Pereira (usually credited as Diego Jourdan, sometimes as Diego J. Pereira) is a Uruguayan comic book artist and illustrator, residing in Santiago de Chile, Chile, and specializing in licensed properties.
Life
Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Diego moved to Santiago de Chile, Chile, in 1991, where he's lived ever since.
Career
Jourdan studied Graphic Design at Universidad del Pacifico in Chile and Computer Typesetting and Design at Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and has worked as an illustrator/cartoonist for over twelve years, mainly for US customers including Simon & Schuster, IDW Publishing, Nickelodeon, Mirage Studios, Titan Magazines, Worthwhile Books, and MAD Magazine (Australia), among many others.
Among the properties and characters Diego has worked on are: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe, Transformers: Animated, Astro Boy, Digger & Friends, Ghostbusters, Smurfs, and Disney/Pixar characters. He has also worked on sketch cards for companies like Topps, on properties such as Star Wars and Mars Attacks.
After working on short lived revamped runs of Ivy the Terrible in The Beano (2010) and Snooty & Scamp (Lord & Lauser) in Wendy (2011), Diego now finds himself involved in other projects for publisher DC Thomson, including promotional comics for the Lego City brand, and illustrations for WWE Kids Magazine.
During 2013, he worked for Tinkle magazine in India. Apart from the comics aforementioned comics projects, Jourdan continues to expand into other fields of illustration while working mainly for publishers in the UK.
New comic projects, as of 2014, include inking Bob Weber Jr. on his strip Slylock Fox & Comics For Kids; and restoring and re-coloring vintage comic panels for online publication Last Kiss. Among his other recent restoration projects are books collecting selected works of Uruguayan comic creators Carlos María Federici (Detective Intergaláctico) and Geoffrey "Fola" Foladori (Fola: el hombre que fue una biblioteca), both published by Uruguayan comics convention Montevideo Comics.
Additional work Jourdan has recently done for Uruguay includes the cover of the children's science fiction graphic novel Crononautas, for GAS Comics, the same small print publisher he did the cover of GAS3K.1 (2011) for.
In his free time, Diego is now pursuing his interest in art printmaking, taking part in exhibitions in Belgium's Sint Niklaas Museum and Japan's Tama Art University. During 2015, Diego took part in Japan's MI Lab Residency program, designed to teach "mokuhanga" (Japanese water-based woodcut printmaking technique) to foreign artists.
Four of Diego's biblical woodcut prints were also included in the book "Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-ups", alongside works by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Franz Marc, and Eric Gill among many others.
As of 2016, he is currently illustrating The Sunday Post's Fun Section comic-strips (which include Oor Wullie, The Broons, and Wee Harry), filling in for regular artist Peter Davidson when the occasion demands it.
Awards and Recognitions
- In January 2009, Jourdan was accepted as a regular member of the prestigious National Cartoonists Society.
- In 2011, Jourdan's short comic Verdes, with Argentinian writer Javier Hildebrandt, won a contest in the Italian magazine MONO, and will be published in issue 10 of said magazine.
- On December 6, 2014, Jourdan was awarded the Morosoli Award (Silver medal, arts category), for his contribution to Uruguayan culture.